After having lived under apartheid for most of his life (a substantial portion of which, 1964 to 1990, he spent in jail), Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa’s first black president 17 years ago today.

Britannica remarks of the historic occasion:

In April 1994 the Mandela-led African National Congress (ANC) won South Africa’s first elections by universal suffrage, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as president of the country’s first multiethnic government. He established in 1995 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated human rights violations under apartheid, and he introduced housing, education, and economic development initiatives designed to improve the living standards of the country’s black population. In 1996 he oversaw the enactment of a new democratic constitution.

With his avuncular features and luminous smile, the then-76-year-old Mandela, already popular with his own people, quickly became an appealing symbol of the triumph of right over wrong in the West. Having endured 27 years of imprisonment, during which time his popularity with black South Africans remained high and his imprisonment became emblematic of the injustices of apartheid to the international community, Mandela’s efforts toward rapprochement with the government responsible for his quarter-century behind bars imbued him with a near-beatific quality. His negotiations with white president F.W. DeKlerk over the transition from apartheid to majority rule in 1991 earned him (with DeKlerk) the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. With his ascent to the presidency in 1994 [view his inaugural address above], his place in the pantheon of leaders who rallied their people against the shackles of colonialist repression was assured (and rightly so).

Yet, Mandela was a different sort of leader than, say, Gandhi. Though initially an advocate of non-violence, that changed when in 1960 unarmed black South Africans were massacred by police forces.

Britannica notes of that evolution:

After the massacre of unarmed black South Africans by police forces at Sharpeville in 1960 and the subsequent banning of the ANC, Mandela abandoned his nonviolent stance and began advocating acts of sabotage against the South African regime. He went underground (during which time he became known as the Black Pimpernel for his ability to evade capture) and was one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the military wing of the ANC. In 1962 he went to Algeria for training in guerrilla warfare and sabotage, returning to South Africa later that year. On August 5, shortly after his return, Mandela was arrested at a road block in Natal; he was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.

In October 1963 the imprisoned Mandela and several other men were tried for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy in the infamous Rivonia Trial, named after a fashionable suburb of Johannesburg where raiding police had discovered quantities of arms and equipment at the headquarters of the underground Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela’s speech from the dock, in which he admitted the truth of some of the charges made against him, was a classic defense of liberty and defiance of tyranny. (His speech garnered international attention and acclaim and was published later that year as I Am Prepared to Die.) On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

Even when offered release by president P.W. Botha in 1985 on the condition that he renounce violence as a legitimate means of resistance, Mandela refused, saying that the government itself would first have to do so. Upon his release in 1990, he maintained a similar position, even toward rival black political groups, stating that the ANC’s patience with groups protesting the movement toward peace would “not last very long.” During the Rivonia trial, it had emerged that he advocated cutting off the noses of blacks viewed as traitors or white collaborators. His wife Winnie—whom he divorced in 1996—had during the 1980s advocated that turncoats be punished by “necklacing”—execution by placing a gasoline-filled tire around the victim’s neck and setting it alight. She was later convicted of participating in the stabbing of a young black activist who was suspected of being a police informer.

Mandela also sought assistance from leaders such as Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya and Fidel Castro of Cuba during his earlier involvement with the ANC and, once liberated, continued those relationships despite allegations of human rights violations by their governments. Though such associations raised hackles in the west, Mandela was instrumental in convincing Qaddafi to turn over the Libya perpetrators of the Lockerbie bombing in 1999.

Though Mandela cannot be held directly responsible for some of the ANC’s more egregious crimes—notably, the torture and execution of dissendent members in training camps in Angola during the 1980s—he was certainly aware of (and responsible for promulgating) the organization’s attitudes.

Does any of this taint his legacy? Or does it merely call into question the truism in the west that non-violence is the best means of effecting change? Share your thoughts in the comments field.